Katie Says: Track down some fun in the snow!

We certainly have been receiving a lot of snow here at Briar Bush! But before you think the only fun thing to do after a heavy snow is to cozy up on the couch with a Snuggie and a cup of hot cocoa, instead consider strapping on your winter jacket and snow boots and heading out to Briar Bush! Snow provides the unique opportunity for winter animal tracking. A hike through the snow-covered woods can reveal countless stories and give you clues to animals you rarely get to see.

On Sunday, following the latest heavy snow, I headed out to a local park to do some tracking of my own. It wasn’t long after I had set out on my adventure that I found some mystery tracks. Fluffy snow makes telling what precisely made the trail a bit more difficult, but following the tracks might lead to more clues. I followed my mystery tracks up the hill and there, in the shelter of a large oak tree and a couple of logs, I found three bowl-like depressions in the snow where deer had spent the snowy night, the snow slightly melted by their body heat. I hiked a bit further and found the tiny, bounding tracks of a white-footed mouse. Every so often, the tracks would end at a perfectly spherical hole as the mouse dove under the snow, only to emerge a few inches later. Perhaps the mouse heard a predator? Certainly there are many predators in the park as my next discovery was the tracks of a red fox on a fallen log. I couldn’t make out the tracks very well, but the musky, skunk-like smell of the “yellow snow” on the log made it perfectly clear whose tracks I was looking at!

If you would like to have your own wildlife tracking adventure, be sure to stop by Briar Bush this week. You’ll be amazed at the stories told in the snow!

Have a question or a story of your own to share? Email me at kfisk[at symbol]briarbush.org!